Optical Pulse Generation by an Optoelectronic Oscillator With Optically Injected Semiconductor Laser

A frequency tunable short optical pulse generation scheme based on a self-starting optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) with an optically injected semiconductor laser is proposed and investigated. The generation of optical pulses with a repetition rate coarsely tuned from 6.5 to 15 GHz are demonstrated. Phase noise of the electrical clock signal from the OEO is below -101 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz within the whole tuning range, which leads to a very small timing jitter of the generated optical pulses. Assisted by optical pulse compression technique in the OEO, the full-width-at half-maximum of the generated optical pulses is narrower than 20 ps.